5 Oct. 1722. Prospect of the Remains of Feversham Abby where K. Stephen was buried.
Durolenum.
From thence the Itinerary leads us to Durolenum. The learned Talbot first guessed it to be Charing; and to me he seems to be in the right. It is upon a spring of the river Len. The present name is derived from the British Caer, as they called all Roman towns in after-times: anciently it was wrote Cering with a Saxon termination, intimating the meadows it stands upon. Roman antiquities are found all about, but nothing I have yet met withal, that particularly fixes the spot the Roman city stood upon. Near is a manor called Broughton; Chart[110] is the name of the hundred, from two little adjoining villages: but at this place the distances answer well, and the roads in many parts appear: that from hence to Canterbury passed by Chilham; so over the river Stour by Sharnford, which retains the British name of a causeway. The archbishops of Canterbury had a castellated palace at Charing, probably given them by some of the first Saxon kings, as a royal demesne of theirs: there are large ruins of it still left. Here was a chantry founded by Sir John Burley. All the ground upon the river Len at the bottom of the great ridge of hills is sand, sometimes exceeding white; between that and the bottom of the hills it is flinty: the hills themselves are pure chalk. All Kent consists of large tracts of ground gradually rising from the east to a western ridge steep that way, so succeeded by another of like manner; but any of these tracts are made up of little hills and short valleys, quite of a different nature from those on the west side of the island: and Mr. Camden has observed this before us, as to the northern part of the island, p. 533. Britannia. We may gather an idea of the natural reason of it from what we spoke at first, of the ground hardening upon the instant of the earth’s rotation.
After we have made this excursion with Antoninus, to take in these two stations, which seems to have been done to conduct travellers the nearest way to the portus Lemanis, we return again to Rochester, that we may finish the progress of the Watling-street.
Feversham.
From Rochester the Watling-street continues very strait to Canterbury, by Feversham, whither I went to visit the remains of the monastery founded by king Stephen, and where he was buried with his family. At present nothing left but TAB. XXVII.two gate-houses, and they of mean structure: the hall was standing intire within this forty year; but now the whole monastery is level with the ground, and converted into orchards, so that I could not so much as guess at the place where the church was. They have a report still, that at the dissolution of abbeys they took up the coffin of lead wherein the king was buried, and sold it: as for his corpse, they threw it into the Thames. Here king Ethelstan enacted laws, anno 903. At Newington.Newington seems to have been another station: many Roman coins and antiquities have been found Ro. town.there. Vide large accounts thereof in Burton’s Itinerary, p. 181. and Casaubon’s translation of Antoninus Philos. Beyond Broughton, which seems to have been another,[111] you come to a very high hill, steep on the west. The Watling-street here first presents the tower of the cathedral in its line, and both together make a fine show:
Apparet rursum moles operosa viarum,
Consurgit stratis agger ubique suis.
Durovernum.
Canterbury is deservedly famous for religious as well as Roman antiquity, being the place where christianity first made its entrance among our Saxon ancestors. Here are many remains of Roman buildings, many made of TAB. XCVI.Roman materials in the Saxon times: many antiquities found in digging about the hop-grounds; your lordship has quantities of them. The city is strongly walled about, and many lunettes or towers at due intervals; a deep ditch close underneath, and a great rampart of earth within. The original ground-plot here, as in many other cities, is spoiled by churches built in the middle of streets. To the south is an old obscure gate, called TAB. LIV.Worth gate, partly walled up: it is under the castle. This is intirely a Roman work: the semi-circular arch is of Roman brick, beautifully turned; the piers of stone; the thickness of it is three Roman feet. I suppose this the original gate of the Roman city, and from hence went the road which presently divides itself into two: the one goes by Chilham to Durolenum, over the river at Sharnford, as we said; the other goes in a very strait line, by the name of Stone-street, to the port of Lemanis. The castle built here in William the Conqueror’s time, extending its limits beyond this gate, was the occasion of blocking it up; and so Winchup gate was built a little further eastward, to supply its use. The castle is much of the same form as that at Rochester, and the walls of the same thickness. A little further within the walls is a very high mount, called Dungeon hill: a ditch and high bank inclose the area before it: it seems to have been part of the old castle. Opposite to it without the walls is a hill, seeming to have been raised by the Danes when they besieged the city. The top of Dungeon hill is equal to the top of the castle, and has a fine prospect over the city and country. The materials of the city-walls are chiefly flint. Next to this, where the Watling-street comes,[112] is Riding-gate, built by a mayor of the city, but evidently in the place of the Roman one; for there is part of the Roman arch, and the pier of one side, still visible, but much lower than the present gate: and in a yard close by is part of the arch of a postern, or foot-gate, by the side of it: these arches are of Roman brick, and there are in the wall here and there some more fragments of the Roman work. The draught of it I have given in the plate of the city ground-plot, 96. Hence the Watling-street passes directly to Dover, over Barham downs. Next to East-gate is another gate, opposite to what they call St. Ethelbert’s tower: this is the way to the port of TAB. XXV.Rutupium. Here is the famous monastery of St. Augustin, the first metropolitan, built, as they say, near the palace of the converted king Ethelbert: two gates remain next the city, and both very stately: perhaps one belonged to the palace, the other to the monastery, which doubtless as magnificent as richly endowed; and such its ruins demonstrate, and the great compass of ground it took up, incircled with a very high wall. Great vying was ever here between the religious of St. Austin and of Tho. à Becket, both very rich and contentious. At the west end of this church, as I conjecture, were two great towers: half of one is still remaining, called TAB. XXIV.Ethelbert’s tower: all the whole stones and pillars about it are skinned off as far as they can reach; and every year a buttress, a side of an arch, or the like, passes sub hasta. There is part of the other standing, if it can be so said, that is only not fallen; I call it muro torto: it is a vast angular piece of the tower, about thirty foot high, which has been undermined by digging away a course at bottom, in order to be thrown down; but it happened only to disjoint itself from the foundation, and leaping, as it were, a little space, lodged itself in the ground in that inclining state, to the wonderment of the vulgar who do not discern the meaning of it, though the foundation it came from is sufficiently visible: thus happening to be equally poized, it is a sight somewhat dreadful, and forbids a too near approach on any side, with the apprehension of its falling that way. Under St. Ethelbert’s tower is the porch where St. Augustin and his six successors, as Bede tells us, were interred: the arched roof is left, but ready to fall: the pavement is gone, in the middle of which was an altar. The adjacent close is full of religious ruins and foundations, one great part turned into a stable near the almery: all over they are busy in pulling it up, to sell the stones; which generally pays the rent, and yet the tenants of such places thrive never the more. TAB. XXV.In one corner of this field are the walls of a chapel, said to have been a christian temple before St. Augustin’s time, and reconsecrated by him to St. Pancras: a great apple-tree and some plum-trees now grow in it: the lower part of it is really old, and mostly made of Roman brick, and thicker walls than the superstructure: there is an old Roman arch on the south side toward to altar, the top of it about as high as one’s nose; so that the ground has been much raised: the present east window is a pointed arch, though made of Roman brick, later than St. Austin’s time: near it a little room, said to have been king Ethelbert’s pagan chapel: however it be, both these and the wall adjoining are mostly built of Roman brick: the breadth of the mortar is rather more than the brick, and full of pebbles; but the mark of the devil’s claws, there observed by the vulgar, is fantastical. The garden and orchard adjoining seem to lie in their ancient form: there is a large square mount close by the wall, which it equals in height, and gives a prospect into the fields. Your lordship has a huge water-pipe dug up among many other antiquities in a Roman bath discovered at Canterbury: it is five inches and a half diameter at the smaller end, seventeen long, seven in diameter at the broad end: they were fastened into one another with strong terrace cement. The great number of other antiquities of all sorts, found at and about this city, make part of your fine collection.